AllThingsD » Sony Reader

Apple on Sony Reader: "We Have Not Changed Our Guidelines"

John Paczkowski — Tue, 01 Feb 2011 17:10:27 +0000

11.2 Apps utilizing a system other than the In App Purchase API (IAP) to purchase content, functionality, or services in an app will be rejected
11.3 Apps using IAP to purchase physical goods or goods and services used outside of the application will be rejected

–Apple’s App Store Review Guidelines

Apple rejected Sony’s Reader iPhone app from the App Store this week in a move that the New York Times portrays as Apple “further tightening its control of the App Store.” And if, as the Times claims, Apple’s rejection of the Reader app meant that Sony and others like it could no longer sell content from their apps or offer customers access to purchases made outside the App Store, it would have been just that. A sudden upending of App Store guidlines that would have broad implications for consumers and popular apps likes Kindle, Netflix, Pandora, Dropbox, Hulu Plus and others.

But that’s not quite what’s happened–not quite.

Apple’s made no change to its App Store guidelines–it’s simply enforcing a rule that’s been in them all along: Apps that allow their users to purchase content, functionality or services must use Apple’s In App Purchase API. “We have not changed our developer terms or guidelines,” company spokesperson Trudy Muller told me. “We are now requiring that if an app offers customers the ability to purchase books outside of the app, that the same option is also available to customers from within the app with in-app purchase.”

In other words: You don’t have to buy books, or music, or other media that you consume on iOS apps from Apple. But developers must offer you the option to buy that stuff through Apple and its iTunes-backed system.

Which means Apple is either trying to boost its revenues–it will take a 30 percent cut of all transactions conducted on iOS devices–or it’s trying to make the iOS ecosystem much less pleasant for certain outsiders; note that Muller’s statement is specific to books.

Neither strategy makes much sense, though: Apple’s iTunes revenues are big, but insignificant for a company its size–Apple uses iTunes to sell hardware, not to make money selling media.

And it was one thing to play hardball with Sony, Amazon and other big players when Apple owned the smartphone market. But Google’s Android OS has evolved into a formidable competitor. Why give people a reason to head there?

So this is a big change for folks like Amazon, Sony and others who must now support the option of buying content in-app, but not that big a change for consumers–assuming folks like Amazon, Sony and others play ball and update their apps according to this newly enforced guideline. On the consumer end, it’s largely a back-end change–again, assuming third-party content peddlers accept the change and the mandate that they must now give Apple a 30 percent cut of in-app sales. In fact, one could argue that it’s an enhancement. Assuming there’s no surcharge on them, in-app purchases are certainly more convenient than those that require loading a Web store in Mobile Safari.

How developers handle this going forward is going to be interesting. Some may well find the idea of paying Apple a percentage on sales made on iOS devices entirely untenable. Other’s may seek a way around it–a 30 percent surcharge on in-app purchases, for example–if such things are allowed.

UPDATE: An entirely hypothetical scenario based on my understanding of these issues. One caveat: my … murky understanding of these issues.

If you want to sell content from within an iOS app, you must now use the In App Purchase API and give Apple its cut of the sale.

Amazon’s Kindle app for iOS currently allows users to purchase books by launching a store in Mobile Safari. Now that Apple is enforcing the guideline described above, it can no longer do that.

Therefore it must either:
a. update the app to support in-app purchases through Apple.
b. update the app to disable out-of-app purchases via a mobile safari store.
c. rethink its iOS device strategy, perhaps telling Kindle App users that they must make Kindle purchases on the Web or Kindle hardware. Remember, “Buy Once, Read Anywhere” …

I’ve reached out to Amazon for comment and haven’t yet heard back.

Transferring E-Books from One iPad App to Another

Walter S. Mossberg — Wed, 22 Sep 2010 21:33:03 +0000

Can I transfer an e-book from one of the iPad e-reader apps you recently reviewed to another?

No. Books purchased from the Amazon, Barnes & Noble and Apple online bookstores are stored separately online and on the iPad, and none of the apps has a transfer mechanism. Plus, the books likely use incompatible copy-protection systems. If you download to your computer an unprotected public-domain book in a format compatible with one of these—or another e-reader app I didn’t review—it may be possible to read that book in more than one of these apps, but I didn’t test that.

My wife and I often like to read if we awaken during the night. Are any of the e-readers back-lit, i.e. usable in the dark?

None of the leading dedicated e-readers, such as Amazon’s Kindle or the Sony Reader, is backlit. In fact, they use special screens without backlighting to extend the battery life and make reading in sunlight easier. However, there are small accessory lights you can buy for these dedicated readers.

Also, the iPad, which I consider a very good e-reader, is backlit. If you’re willing to read on a small screen, you could use an e-reader app on numerous Android, BlackBerry, or Apple smartphones, or on the 5″ Dell Streak Android tablet. All of these devices are backlit.

You can find Mossberg’s Mailbox, and Walt Mossberg’s other columns, online for free at the All Things Digital website, http://walt.allthingsd.com. Write to him at mossberg@wsj.com.

Finding the Best Way to Read Books on an iPad

Walter S. Mossberg — Thu, 16 Sep 2010 01:04:42 +0000

Though it’s just five months old, Apple’s iPad is a certifiable hit, having already sold millions of units and spawning tens of thousands of apps tailored for its 10-inch screen. The tablet has prompted many of its owners to use it instead of their laptops for everything from email and social networking to games and Web surfing.

It’s also a very good e-reader, in my view.

[ See post to watch video ]

Unlike dedicated e-reader devices like Amazon’s Kindle, the iPad offers a wide selection of e-reading apps, and I have used several of them heavily to devour scores of books. In particular, I have spent the past few weeks testing the best known of these iPad e-reader apps, comparing their strengths and weaknesses.

My verdict is that none of the three apps I focused on—which mimic and often interact with dedicated e-readers like the Kindle device—towers over the others. Each has its good and bad points, and I personally switch among them.

First, let me note that this isn’t a comparison of the iPad and the dedicated e-readers. It is about software readers on the iPad itself. Some folks will prefer the focused e-reader hardware, such as Amazon’s Kindle, Sony’s (SNE) Reader and Barnes & Noble’s Nook. The latter devices cost much less—the base Kindle is now $139 versus the iPad’s $499 starting price. They also have longer battery life and are much lighter. But others—including me—prefer the iPad’s big, bright, backlit color screen to the smaller, gray screens of the dedicated e-readers, and the fact that they can pause periodically in their reading to do so many other things on the iPad without reaching for a laptop.

For this review, I compared Apple’s own fledgling e-reader software and store, called iBooks; Amazon’s Kindle iPad app; and the newly revamped Barnes & Noble iPad app, called Nook.

Overall, they are more similar than different. Each is free and operates much like the pioneering Kindle device, offering access to an online library of books you already own and an online store to buy more. Each remembers where you left off in your books, and includes built-in search, dictionaries and the ability to enter notes and to highlight text. All also offer the option to search for more information on terms in your books, using Google or Wikipedia.

Apple’s iBooks app visually is the slickest of the three. Its library screen looks like a wooden bookcase, and when you turn a page, it curves like a paper page and even shows the text on the other side bleeding through. When you hold the iPad horizontally, iBooks switches to a two-page view with a rounded rise in the middle, like a paper book’s binding. The iBooks app is the only one of the three to offer a built-in bookstore, while the Amazon (AMZN) and Nook apps require you to jump into the Web browser on the iPad to shop. This is because Apple charges third-party app developers 30% to make in-app purchases, a price Amazon and Barnes & Noble (BKS) prefer not to pay. This may be an unfair advantage for Apple, but it’s convenient for users.

The iBooks app also can handle personal PDF files, synced to the app via iTunes on your computer. Neither of the other two apps offer PDFs on the iPad, though Amazon and Barnes & Noble say they’re working on it. Also, Apple (AAPL) has harnessed the iPad’s accessibility features to allow its e-books to be read aloud, something I couldn’t make happen in the other two apps.

But iBooks has some big downsides. The most important is that, being only five months old, it has a smaller catalog than its rivals—just 130,000 titles, versus around 700,000 for the Kindle app and about one million for the Nook app. For instance, the popular Swedish mystery series by Stieg Larsson is absent from the iBooks catalog. And iBooks doesn’t offer any periodicals.

Amazon’s Kindle app has the biggest catalog of commercial, copyrighted, in-print books—about 655,000 titles. The Nook catalog of a million books is larger overall, but about half consists of out-of-print books. The Kindle app also instantly displays the dictionary definition of any word you highlight. The others require you to press a dictionary icon to look up a word. And, like iBooks, it was fast at opening books.

The Kindle app also lets you see popular highlighted passages selected by other users, and it synchronizes the last page read, your bookmarks and notes with the Kindle hardware reader and Kindle apps on Windows PCs, Macs, and BlackBerry and Android devices. iBooks only syncs these things to the iBooks app on other Apple hand-held devices, the iPhone and iPod Touch. The Kindle app also can be set to turn pages with the same curved effect as iBooks (but without the text-bleeding effect) and it has a two-page view in horizontal mode.

The Kindle app also lacks periodicals, though Amazon says it’s working on this. And the Kindle app, like the Kindle hardware, doesn’t use real page numbers, relying on confusing “location” numbers. The others use page numbers. Also, some books appeared in the Kindle app in scanned, hard to read typefaces, while the same books on the others appeared in more readable type.

The Nook iPad app, like the Nook hardware device, has a big plus: It lets you lend and borrow some titles to and from other Nook users for two weeks. It’s also the only one of the three to offer periodicals, though not all are available. For instance, The Wall Street Journal and the Boston Globe can’t be downloaded, though the New York Times can.

The Nook also offers more visual effects than the others, including color themes for background and text colors. Also, like the Kindle app, it syncs with Nook apps on numerous other devices, though, curiously, not yet with the Nook hardware device.

But I found more limitations and flaws in the Nook app’s basic book functions. For many words, the app lacked dictionary entries the others had, and books loaded more slowly. Also, one book I downloaded on the Nook app had the first few pages missing and another turned out to be a different book from its title. Also, its horizontal view didn’t work for all the titles I tested.

In my tests, book prices seemed roughly similar on all three apps, though some books may cost less on one or another. For instance, Jonathan Franzen’s new book “Freedom,” is $12.99 on each; David McCullough’s classic “1776″ costs $13.99 on each; and Laurie King’s “The Beekeeper’s Apprentice” is $9.99 on all three. Amazon says 574,000 of its 700,000 e-books are $9.99 or less. Barnes & Noble says the “vast majority” of its commercial e-books are $9.99 or less. And Apple says 75% of its paid books are $9.99 or less and 25% of its paid books are less than $4.99.

Overall, each of the three iPad apps makes the device a fine way to read e-books. Multiple apps and stores—including many not covered here—allow choices absent from dedicated reading devices.

Find Walt Mossberg’s columns and videos at walt.allthingsd.com.

Write to Walter S. Mossberg at walt.mossberg@wsj.com

The ABCs of E-Reading

Geoffrey A. Fowler and Marie C. Baca — Wed, 25 Aug 2010 21:14:45 +0000

People who buy e-readers tend to spend more time than ever with their nose in a book, preliminary research shows.

A study of 1,200 e-reader owners by Marketing and Research Resources Inc. found that 40 percent said they now read more than they did with print books. Of those surveyed, 58 percent said they read about the same as before while two percent said they read less than before. And 55 percent of the respondents in the May study, paid for by e-reader maker Sony Corp., thought they’d use the device to read even more books in the future. The study looked at owners of three devices: Amazon.com Inc.’s (AMZN) Kindle, Apple Inc.’s (AAPL) iPad and the Sony (SNE) Reader.

While e-readers are still a niche product just beginning to spread beyond early adopters, these new reading experiences are a big departure from the direction U.S. reading habits have been heading. A 2007 study by the National Endowment for the Arts caused a furor when it reported Americans are spending less time reading books. About half of all Americans ages 18 to 24 read no books for pleasure, it found.

Some 11 million Americans are expected to own at least one digital reading gadget by the end of September, estimates Forrester Research. U.S. e-book sales grew 183 percent in the first half of this year compared with the year-earlier period, according to the Association of American Publishers.

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The Chapter And Verse on E-Bookstores

Geoffrey A. Fowler — Thu, 27 May 2010 01:14:49 +0000

As books go digital, much of the focus has been on which gadgets offer the best approximation of old-fashioned paper and ink on a screen. But there’s another choice that’s just as important for readers to weigh before they make the leap to e-books: which e-bookstore to frequent.

Reading devices like the iPad, Kindle and Nook will come and go, but you’ll likely want your e-book collection to stick around. Yet unlike music, commercial e-books from the leading online stores come with restrictions that complicate your ability to move your collection from one device to the next. It’s as if old-fashioned books were designed to fit on one particular style of bookshelves. What happens when you remodel?

[ See post to watch video ]

Much of this problem stems from the publishing industry, which has demanded that e-bookstores embed digital rights management software in most best sellers to keep them from being stolen and swapped, free, online. The music labels once asked the same from digital-music retailers, but eventually agreed to open up.

The e-bookstores share in the blame. Amazon.com Inc. (AMZN), Apple Inc. (AAPL), Barnes & Noble Inc. (BKS) and Sony Corp. (SNE) all want you to buy their own gadgets and to continue buying e-books from their stores. For example, purchases from Apple’s new iBooks store can be read only on Apple’s own iPad (and soon the iPhone). Even though Apple said it would support an industry standard format called ePub for iBooks, in practice your iBooks purchases remain locked on Apple’s virtual bookshelf. (So I hope iBooks customers like Apple’s light-brown wood paneling.)

Browsing Amazon.com on the Kindle

Many of the biggest e-book providers fall short of putting readers fully in charge of their own digital-book collections, but they have begun to unveil their own solutions for moving your e-books around.

Amazon, which jump-started the shift to e-books with its Kindle, lets customers read its e-books through apps on at least six kinds of devices. Amazon custom-built the free apps for gadgets that include the iPhone, iPad, BlackBerry, PC, Mac and (later this summer) devices running Google’s (GOOG) Android software. If a device has an Internet connection, the apps automatically load Amazon e-book purchases from the company’s website, saving you the fuss of keeping track of files and transferring them between gadgets with cables. In many ways, this is more convenient than the way we manage our digital-music collections by manually adding and deleting files from iPods through a computer.

Amazon’s apps are slick and work on many of the most popular devices today, but Amazon buyers should know that they’re likely stuck using the retailer’s software forever. While Amazon says it plans to keep making apps for more devices, the list of potential devices for reading grows longer every day. Moreover, Amazon sells its e-books in a proprietary format, so there’s no way to open those files on another device without an Amazon app or without resorting to cumbersome (and potentially illegal) third-party conversion software.

The Nook with Barnes & Noble store

Barnes & Noble, too, adopted an Internet-connected app approach, providing a seamless way to shift its e-books between the Nook, PC, Mac, BlackBerry, iPhone, WindowsMobile for the HTC HD2 and soon iPad. Barnes & Noble has been integrating its e-bookstore into niche e-reading devices, like those by Plastic Logic, Irex and Pandigital. It also, uniquely, offers you the chance to “loan” some e-book purchases to a friend for 14 days. But its bookstore requires a somewhat annoying step: Each time you download a book to a new device, you must enter your name and the credit-card number that was used to buy the book in order to unfasten the digital lock on the book.

Beyond the apps, Sony, Barnes & Noble and Apple and a few smaller e-bookstores all promised they’d put their weight behind the industry standard format ePub, which is the e-book version of music’s Mp3 and can be read by almost every reading device (except the Kindle). That sounds great in theory, but in practice, the ePub files either can’t be transferred or doing so is cumbersome.

The problem is each company adds digital rights management software to an ePub book. A copy of “Moby Dick” I bought from iBooks delivered just blank pages when I opened it on the Nook. A Barnes & Noble e-book produced an error message in Sony’s PC ePub reading software. Barnes & Noble says its books will be compatible with devices like the Sony Reader after a software upgrade.

An iPad showing Apple’s iBooks store.

There were two notable exceptions: Purchases from Sony’s e-bookstore and a Borders Group (BGP)-backed store called Kobo could open on the Nook and other ePub-reading devices if I used a free program from Adobe (ADBE) called Digital Editions to transfer it. That’s a nice insurance policy but the process is far more complicated than it should be.

There may yet be a third way. Google, which plans to launch an e-bookstore later this year, says customers will be able to access its books through apps on popular devices and through a Web browser on any device—including a phone or computer. Google’s argument is that we shouldn’t lock ourselves into one bookstore if it is going to offer titles that are dependent on special apps or devices. Google’s existing free out-of-copyright books service works under this same general premise, but it isn’t yet ready for prime time. It requires you to always be online to read a book and its pages aren’t well formatted for reading on small screens or mobile devices. Google executives say they will fix both issues when the commercial service launches.

For now, the e-bookstore choice comes down to which compromises readers are willing to accept. Anybody who just wants a simple way to carry digital books around might be happy with an app-based approach. But readers intent on building an e-library may want to either invest in an ePub-based collection, or hold off until the industry figures out a better solution.

Walter S. Mossberg will return June 10.

Write to Geoffrey A. Fowler at geoffrey.fowler@wsj.com

E-Readers: Walt Tells You How To Choose

Walt Mossberg — Fri, 12 Mar 2010 00:37:50 +0000

Interviewed on Digits today, Walt notes three key features to consider when purchasing an e-reader: Readability, battery life and the ease of purchasing books. He also looks ahead to the next wave of tablet computers that will offer e-reading functionality such as the Apple (AAPL) iPad.

[ See post to watch video ]

Sony's E-Reader Opens New Chapter in Kindle Rivalry

Walter S. Mossberg — Thu, 14 Jan 2010 02:03:18 +0000

Sony, the Japanese electronics giant, was a pioneer in the current wave of electronic book readers, introducing its first Sony Reader model back in 2006. But, it has been overtaken by Amazon.com, whose Kindle e-book reader, introduced in 2007, has become almost synonymous with the category. Now, Sony (SNE) is out with a much-improved model that could make it more competitive.

Unlike the Kindle, Sony’s readers weren’t wireless and their owners couldn’t download books or newspapers directly to the device, instead of via a computer. Now, that problem has finally been solved with Sony’s new Reader Daily Edition, a handsome $400 wireless model that I’ve been testing.

[ See post to watch video ]

The Daily Edition can be bought at Sony’s stores; at its Web site, sonystyle.com; and at Best Buy’s (BBY) site, bestbuy.com. It was sold out for the holidays, but Sony says it expects new stock soon.

The Daily Edition isn’t a mere clone of the Kindle. It has a different design philosophy and is stronger in some areas, weaker in others. In general, I enjoyed using it, once I mastered its user interface, which took several days. I especially liked the fact that it packs a larger screen into a comfortably small device, and mostly uses touch navigation instead of all physical controls. For instance, while the Sony does have a small page-turning button, you can more easily turn pages by just swiping your finger across the screen. It’s also better at navigating digital newspapers, something I’ve never found very satisfying on the Kindle.

(Full disclosure: Sony has struck a special deal with Dow Jones, which owns The Wall Street Journal and this Web site. Under the deal, a special late-day edition of the Journal, containing updated news, will be available on the Daily Edition for an extra charge starting later in January.)

On the downside, the Daily Edition has three main flaws when compared with the Kindle. First, it’s much more expensive—$400 versus just $259. Second, it has only about half of the commercial, copyrighted digital books that Amazon (AMZN) does—around 200,000 versus the Kindle’s roughly 400,000. Sony also throws in a million out-of-copyright, old books, for a total of 1.2 million.

But many of these added million titles are obscure and of little interest to mainstream consumers. The Reader also has just eight newspapers, versus 92 for the Kindle, though Sony says 10 more are coming soon.

Third, the technology that makes the screen touch sensitive also dims it a bit, so the Daily Edition’s screen is darker than the Kindle’s. (Both are unlit monochrome screens with gray-scale graphics.) I found the Sony screen adequate, but it’s tougher to read in lower light.

The Daily Edition is a slender device with a black metal body that contrasts sharply with the wider, white plastic body of the Kindle. While both products use the same basic screen technology, and the same screen width, the Daily Edition’s screen is longer; it measures 7 inches versus 6 inches for the Kindle. In my tests, I found this a big advantage, because, when both devices were set for roughly comparable text sizes, the Sony could hold more text on a page, cutting down on the need for page turns, which interrupt reading.

In addition, the Daily Edition is narrower than the Kindle, because the borders around the screen are thinner, since they don’t have to accommodate the Kindle’s various large buttons or physical keyboard. (You can enter text for notes or searches on the Daily Edition using a stylus for handwriting or a virtual onscreen keyboard.) This longer, narrower shape gives the new Sony a nice feel in the hand.

I also preferred the Sony’s method for presenting newspapers, which allowed more headlines to be viewed at once and required fewer steps to navigate through the paper.

Sony’s new Daily Edition Electronic Reader

The Sony also claims more battery life with wireless turned off, comes with a cover included—an extra-cost item on the Kindle—and can handle more book formats, including the free digital books offered by public libraries. Built-in memory is the same, but the Daily Edition’s can be expanded while the Kindle’s can’t.

Like the Kindle, the new Sony also allows you to drag songs, pictures and some personal documents onto the device from your computer. I did this with no problems.

The Daily Edition has companion software for buying, reading and storing books on both PCs and Macs. But it has no app for a smart phone, and doesn’t synchronize your last-read place in your book among the reader and the computer.

Also, I found the Daily Edition required a harder learning process than the Kindle. First, it takes awhile to get the hang of the touch gestures, partly because they require much more pressure than on, say, an iPhone. Second, using touch to bring up features and menus can be a mystery until you consult the manual. For instance, it took days to discover that you could set a bookmark by double-tapping on the upper right corner.

But, all in all, despite its higher price, the Daily Edition is a big leap for Sony and adds another good choice for consumers.

Find all of Walt Mossberg’s columns and videos online, free, at the All Things Digital Web site, walt.allthingsd.com. Email mossberg@wsj.com.

Sony Recruits News Corp. to Give Its Reader Line a Boost

Peter Kafka — Thu, 17 Dec 2009 16:21:58 +0000

How do you catch up to Amazon in the e-book race it is running away with? Maybe exclusive content will help.

That’s what Sony says it is trying to do with News Corp. and some of its publications. The partnership the two companies announced today won’t be nearly enough to make Sony’s Reader line competitive. But it does point in the direction both companies would like to head.

Dow Jones (which owns this Web site) will sell a version of its flagship Wall Street Journal for the Reader devices, as well as a “Wall Street Journal Plus” package that includes a second mini-edition of the paper to be published at the end of the day. Also on offer: A Reader-tailored version of the Marketwatch finance site and a subscription to the New York Post.

Sony (SNE) will have the only e-reader that sells the Post and the second edition of the WSJ. But that’s about it as far as exclusivity goes. The regular Reader version of the Journal looks to be the same one Amazon (AMZN) is already selling at the same price: $15 a month for the basic edition.

And even if you’re one of the people who loves to read a print paper on a handheld device, most of these offers don’t make a lot of sense for an e-reader.

The Post is a tabloid that’s pretty much designed to be consumed, then tossed away, in the course of a subway ride–and if you want to get it for free on the Web, you can do that too.

You can also consume all of Marketwatch for free on the Web, where it makes much more sense to do so, since that the site provides constant updates on…the market.

And given the Journal’s increasing emphasis on speed and breaking news, you’d think its paying subscribers would want the freshest copy possible. But the Sony Reader version is completely static.

So this is pretty much a symbolic deal, right? More or less, Sony CEO Howard Stringer told a press conference this morning. The big picture, he says, is that devices like the Reader are both a growth business for Sony and an opportunity for content owners to charge for stuff that has been free on the Web.

“The sense of losing control of our content is on all of our minds,” says Stringer, whose company is famously both a hardware manufacturer and an entertainment provider. “We’re trying to preserve the value of content in both movies and music and newspapers.”

That dovetails with News Corp.’s (NWS) big-picture plans, which CEO Rupert Murdoch has been has been hollering out at every opportunity: Pay up.

But there’s also a more practical side to the deal for News Corp., which wants to distribute its stuff on as many platforms as possible–and extract better terms than it gets from Amazon and its Kindle platform.

In November, Murdoch said his company was getting up to $6.50 for each $15 Journal subscription it sold via Amazon (AMZN), but noted that this isn’t enough. News Corp. and other publishers have also carped that Amazon keeps valuable customer data for itself.

The Sony deal offers better terms, said Wall Street Journal Managing Editor Robert Thomson, without getting into specifics: “I think you can assume that we’re getting a better deal and that our concerns about customer information have been addressed.”

Skiff Joins a Cadre of E-Subscription Options

Geoffrey A. Fowler — Fri, 04 Dec 2009 20:45:34 +0000

Hearst is unveiling Skiff, its own service to sell subscriptions to newspapers and magazines on dedicated e-reading and other convergent devices.

Hearst executives say that they were driven to create Skiff because existing options just don’t live up to the expectations of newspaper readers–and the business needs of publishers.

Here’s a round-up of what else exists in the market today:

Amazon Kindle

The Offer: Wireless subscriptions to 77 U.S. and international newspapers and 40 magazines. Articles are displayed with headlines, text and some photos in a format that looks like the page in a book, not a newspaper.

Prices: $6 to $15 per month for newspapers, $1.50 to $11

Sony Reader

The Offer: Subscriptions to newspapers and magazines, which have yet to be named. More are forthcoming when Sony’s (SNE) wireless Daily Edition Reader hits the market later this month.

Prices: Unknown

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Barnes & Noble to Amazon: Mine Is Bigger Than Yours

John Paczkowski — Tue, 21 Jul 2009 09:00:36 +0000

Six years after shuttering its first e-book effort, Barnes & Noble has embarked on a new one. Monday afternoon, the bookseller announced what it describes as “the world’s largest eBookstore,” an online storefront that boasts 700,000 titles.

That’s substantially more than the 300,000 available for download on Amazon’s Kindle service, though half-a-million of them are public-domain books provided by Google (GOOG). They’ll be compatible with Apple’s (AAPL) iPhone and iPod touch, BlackBerry smartphones, and, when it finally arrives at market, the Plastic Logic eReader, a Kindle DX-size e-book reader for which the Barnes & Noble eBookstore will be the exclusive storefront.

“Today marks the first phase of our digital strategy, which is rooted in the belief that readers should have access to the books in their digital library from any device, from anywhere, at any time,” said BN.com president William J. Lynch.

With a few noteworthy exceptions, of course. E-books sold by Barnes & Noble (BKS) won’t be compatible with Sony’s (SNE) Sony Reader Digital Book or Amazon’s (AMZN) Kindle, which they are clearly intended to undermine.

To what degree they’ll manage that is anyone’s guess. One thing is sure: We’ll almost certainly be seeing an e-book price war in the near future. And when Apple finally gets around to uncrating that tablet/e-reader device it’s been working on, all bets are off.

Below, video of the Plastic Logic Reader demo from our D7 conference in late May.

[ See post to watch video ]

Barnes & Noble to Amazon: Mine Is Bigger Than Yours

John Paczkowski — Tue, 21 Jul 2009 09:00:36 +0000

Below, video of the Plastic Logic Reader demo from our D7 conference in late May.

[ See post to watch video ]

Venture Capitalists Mourn Weak IPO Market After E Ink Buyout

William M. Bulkeley — Wed, 03 Jun 2009 17:19:09 +0000

Venture capitalists view the decision by e-book pioneer E Ink Corp. to sell out to a Taiwanese company as one more sign of the moribund IPO market.

E Ink, of Cambridge, Mass., would once have been a sure-fire candidate for an initial public offering. Its sales more than doubled to $18 million in the first quarter on the strength of rising sales of products like Amazon.com’s (AMZN) Kindle and Sony’s (SNE) Reader, which use E Ink technology. But today IPOs are scanty, and venture capitalists increasingly look to the mergers-and-acquisitions market as their best exit.

E Ink president Russ Wilcox said after the sale announcement that it was easier for Prime View International, its Taipei-based acquirer, to raise money by going public there and in London than it would have been for E Ink to go public in the U.S. “This is an innovative way to get access to the public markets and grow the company at a very fast speed,” he said.

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Kindle DX: Must You Power Down on the Plane?

Matt Phillips — Thu, 07 May 2009 17:37:22 +0000

Some tech-savvy fliers find it a bit frustrating that they’re asked to turn off their Kindles and e-readers for takeoffs and landings.

The Kindle DX, displaying a page from The New York Times (NYT), is demonstrated at a news conference Wednesday.

Airlines say Amazon’s (AMZN) Kindle and Sony’s (SNE) Reader are like any other portable electronic device, and thus must be turned off for takeoff and landing. Still, this does not sit well with some fliers.

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Purchasing an E-Reader

Walter S. Mossberg — Thu, 20 Nov 2008 02:26:03 +0000

Here are a few questions I’ve received recently from people like you, and my answers. I have edited and restated the questions a bit, for readability.

I want to purchase an e-reader. Currently I use my Palm Tungsten, but the screen is rather small for reading books. I purchased the Amazon Kindle for my niece but I do not like the design of it. Are there any other e-readers on the market that have a full keyboard and can connect to the Internet?

A: There may be some obscure models that do, but the main competitor to the Kindle, Sony’s Reader, lacks a direct connection to the Internet. You have to purchase titles on a computer and then move them to the device. The Reader does have a keyboard, but it’s virtual, not physical.

I’m considering the new 13″ aluminum-body MacBook. I’m a nontech guy doing routine computing tasks. I own an iMac and I’m ready to add a laptop. The only downside to the new MacBook seems to be the absence of a FireWire port. Is that a deal killer?

I don’t believe so. At one time, FireWire (also called 1394 or iLink on some computers and peripheral devices) was much faster than USB, but now the two are about the same speed. At one time, plugging most camcorders, or many external hard disks, required FireWire. Now both types of devices typically use USB or offer both types of ports.

If you are a professional photographer, videographer or musician with a heavy investment in USB peripheral devices, then the lack of a FireWire port may make the new MacBook a non-starter. But for an average user, unless you have invested in FireWire-only peripherals, I don’t think its absence would matter at all. Besides, you still have your iMac, which includes FireWire.

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